Insight: 'Wake Up' by Clocked Out

'Insight' is Resonate's new series of features, in which the
AMC's represented artists take a close look at some aspect of
their own work - a tour, a collaboration, a project, an
individual work of art. Erik
Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson give us the first insight
into Clocked Out's current collaborative project Wake Up!.

On Wednesday 23 March Clocked Out presented Wake Up! - a
performance that promised: 'the sharp trill of an alarm clock
launches Clocked Out into 2011. It's time to wake up to the
everyday sounds around us with special guests Joel Stern,
Lawrence English, Nicholas Ng, Jan Baker-Finch and more.'

An older press blurb, published on the Griffith University events
site, had promised this: 'Clocked Out invites you to Wake Up! to
new sounds. In a new concert-length work, the duo extends its
instrumentation from prepared piano and percussion to include a
set of alarm clocks collected on a road trip across Australia.
This is acoustic morphing at its best.'

Wake Up!, as a concert-length production, was a brand-new concept
for Clocked Out, one that was only truly revealed in the moment
of performance. Reflective understanding began at 7.45pm on
Wednesday night, just after the concert's conclusion. A month
earlier there was panic in the makers' studio as the idea for the
content of this new work had run out of steam. It was originally
thought that, during a car trip across Australia, a large number
of alarm clocks would be collected from op-shops, and the concert
would be an examination of acoustic morphing between these sound
sources and the territory of Clocked Out - prepared piano, found
objects, toys and percussion. It was to be a fantasy of sound,
with seemingly impossible solutions to sonic conundrums.

But, as it turns
out, op-shops in the Outback don't have a lot of alarm clocks,
and the search for them soon wore thin. And the performance
possibilities of alarm clocks soon showed their limitations, as
did their acoustic variability. The plan had to be rethought.

Reacting to an increasing sense of anxiety, we quickly hatched a
plan to invite a series of guests, in the hope of injecting some
fresh perspectives into the event. We immediately thought of a
group of artists with whom we had initiated a series of
intriguing exchanges over the past few years. The past
collaborations were of a highly experimental nature (read: we
were not yet sure what was going to happen so did not know how to
tell people about it), or were situated in remote locations
(Wivenhoe Dam, Condamine River) and so weren't widely known to
our local audience. We added to this the criteria that all works
be thematically unified through association with morning,
awakening, passing time, dreams or sleeplessness. Enter our four
guests and a new drive to understand the work.

At this point there is an evolving logic, but the central
character - Clocked Out Duo - still needed to create new work and
be involved in all the work with collaborators. Given a deadline
of a pre-Wake Up performance ('Soft soft loud loud' in
Fremantle), we managed to come up with a new 15-minute work based
around the original alarm clock idea, featuring 'So rehearsals are not so much about practising
music. They are about building sound...'pre-recorded
clocks and different relationships of time. Found objects such as
Forstner bits (from a circular saw) became a central
through-line, thanks to a gift from a friend, an accidentally
discovered lopsided bossa groove, and a series of wooden planks
helped define a setup, which in turn helped define piano
preparations. The combination of found objects and piano is a
circular affair with neither being able to be fully constructed
until the other is known. They reference each other in pitch and
timbre - expanding, or morphing into each other - and the
complimentary nature of this newly formed combination timbre is
the essence of Clocked Out's sound world. Once the world has been
constructed, the music inside that instrumentation can be
'sounded' in an improvisatory exploration. So rehearsals are not
so much about practising music. They are about building sound.

Other concepts were also falling into place, literally, as it
turns out. A Clocked Out favourite, Spill - in which
20kgs of rice pours from a swinging pendulum-like cone over an
assortment of sounding objects - was written by Erik Griswold in
2008. The work has had a number of versions, including forming
the finale of the circus show 'Fake It' (Hoopla Festival, Sydney
2010 with Nikki Robbins, Chelsea McGuffin and Vanessa Tomlinson).
The dada-inflected circus rendition inspired us to enlist
eurythmist Jan Baker-Finch to perform in yet another recasting of
Spill. In her version, the performer herself becomes a
'prepared performer'; bending, stretching, and otherwise placing
parts of her body under the continuous spill of rice grains. In
this version the performer now articulates the fall of the rice,
examining its sounding possibilities by transforming and
interrupting its fall. The idea of a swinging pendulum resonated
with our 'clock' theme, while the endless stream of rice
suggests, perhaps, an hourglass, the relentlessness of time.

Lawrence English has been sweeping the globe in search of its
most compelling sounds, which have become the material for his
intriguing recordings, performances and installations. We asked
Lawrence to assemble a collection of his favourite morning
sounds, and he obliged us with his extraordinary recordings of
waking up in Antarctica, the Amazon and dawn chorus at the more
local Bunya Mountain. These we combined with the live soundscapes
of Clocked Out Duo, using an approach we've developed in
site-specific performances with Richard Nunns, Jane Rigler, and
others at remote bush locations. This approach incorporates an
array of sound sources including toys, found objects and natural
materials, using a variety of techniques mimicking natural
processes, including dropping, rubbing, and scratching. The goal
for us in this kind of electroacoustic improvisation is a
seamless blend of finely filtered acoustic sounds with field
recordings; a seamless blend of three performers using starkly
different material. Perhaps this is the acoustic morphing we were
searching for with the alarm clocks.

Work with Joel Stern was evolving in a completely different
direction. Initially the concept was for Erik and Joel to perform
a set of works for foot pump-operated sound makers and other
toys, based on an earlier collaboration at Brisbane Powerhouse.
After exploring a few other possibilities, this somehow evolved
into the idea of light operated synthesisers projecting onto
ropes - forming a kinetic sculptural work - which then evolved
into a light/sound show with accompanying antiphonal bass drums
and snare drums. Performed in the dark, with hand-held 'disco'
lights, this work in the end had a club feel, exploring a
different dimension of the 'wake up!' theme.

Our collaboration with Nicholas
Ng had a notated starting point. Given our renewed enthusiasm
toward Chinese music (Clocked Out had just returned from Chengdu,
China and an inspiring tour of our large ensemble project 'The
Wide Alley') we decided to arrange an early morning song from the
cake-selling man for erhu, piano and vibraphone, and then to mix
in a couple of favourite tunes from 'The States' (presented at
the Judith Wright in 2009) for bass melodica, melodica and erhu.
The music was difficult - needing precision, lightness and
extreme skill to execute. The programming of this right before
the more sonically indulgent set with Joel was really important
to us, in that it juxtaposed two extremes of our musical
interests.

To round out the show, and because we had been looking backwards,
we decided to go back to the year 2000 when Clocked Out first
began, and play an old tune of Erik's - Every Night the Same
Dream. It was interesting in itself to relearn an old
semi-notated work that we had performed more than 100 times
across around 15 countries but not revisited in around five
years. But it was also interesting to note how our style of
composing and learning music had evolved. This work was very
particular, with endless tempo changes, timbral shifts and a
particularly idiosyncratic form. It was mostly pre-composed with
limited scope for improvisation. And it was for piano and
stand-up drumset - not prepared piano and found objects. This was
not so much about sounding the instrument, but rather about
sounding the idea - with a much stronger emphasis on rhythm and
form.

While finishing touches were being put in place as late as two
days before the concert (and by finishing touches I am actually
referring to first rehearsals!), another element was taking
shape. Presentation has always been extremely important to
Clocked Out. Lighting and staging are considered in detail, but
it is the sequence and flow of events into a larger
meta-structure which is most important for us. In Wake
Up!, the question was how to '...it
is the sequence and flow of events into a larger meta-structure
which is most important for us'unify the eclectic
stylistic and sonic strands and somehow tie together the notions
of time, clocks, and awakening into one whole. Which brings us to
the final element: an ice sculpture!

Erik had the idea for weeks about including an ice sculpture in
the performance to activate the sonic environment of the recital
hall, and also to introduce a chance element into the
performance. It was just a question of engineering. After a few
failed attempts, we drew on the work of Japanese-American artist
Mineko Grimmer, creating a hanging structure filled with crushed
ice and small aquarium pebbles. As the ice melts, the pebbles
become dislodged and drop onto a sculptural array of small
percussive instruments. In the course of the performance, pebbles
would sporadically drop, poignantly punctuating moments of
silence or adding a surprising tag to the ends of particular
pieces. It is hard not to notice when a small pebble plings onto
a toy piano tyne in an otherwise silent moment - it changes the
shape of the space and the perspective of all involved. Suddenly
both performers and audience are listeners together, unsure of
what will happen next. Our technical manager Cameron Hipwell
managed to create a visual world around our instruments that
included this sculpture and the rice cone, plus four discreet
instrumental stations including a prepared and an un-prepared
piano.

Suffice to say we now had a show, an order, and a plan to present
these elements. The only thing was we still did not know what it
was we were making. This is what we love about performance - the
emotional effect of one piece followed by another only becomes
apparent as it is happening; the flow of time, the surprise of
the ice-sculpture punctuations, the juxtaposition of ideas,
unimagined relationships between pieces, what the total journey
may be.

Subjects discussed by this article:

For ten years Clocked Out have produced some of Australia's most innovative contemporary music and interarts projects. Through their varied collaborations they have sought to bring together musicians, performers, artists and audiences from diverse backgrounds. By following their creativity to unexpected places, their work has explored the boundaries between musical styles and artistic disciplines. In their core group Clocked Out Duo, directors Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson have made piano, percussion, and toy instruments their sonic playground.

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